| Developer(s) | Open Source Geospatial Foundation |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 1.8.1 / July 9, 2011 |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Library |
| License | X/MIT |
| Website | www.gdal.org |
GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command-line utilities for data translation and processing.
The related OGR library (which is part of the GDAL source tree) provides a similar capability for simple features vector data.
GDAL was primarily developed by Frank Warmerdam until the release of version 1.3.2, when maintainership was officially transferred to the GDAL/OGR Project Management Committee under the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.
GDAL/OGR is considered a major free software project for it "extensive capabilities of data exchange" and also in the commercial GIS community due to its widespread use and comprehensive set of functionalities[1]. In the words of Howard Butler "I see GDAL as the glibc/glibc++ of the geospatial software world. It's open, it provides core functionality, I can't understand how anybody gets anything done without it."
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Several software programs use the GDAL/OGR libraries to allow them to read and write multiple GIS formats. Such programs include:
GDAL provides at least partial support for more than 120 raster geospatial data formats[3]. A subset of data formats is supported to ensure the ability to directly create files and georeferencing them with the default GDAL compiling options.
Here follows the list of data formats whose support is compiled by default allowing creation and georeferencing.
| Raster data format name | Code |
|---|---|
| Arc/Info ASCII Grid [1] | AAIGrid |
| ADRG/ARC Digitalized Raster Graphics (.gen/.thf) [2] | ADRG |
| Magellan BLX Topo (.blx, .xlb) [3] | BLX |
| Microsoft Windows Device Independent Bitmap (.bmp) [4] | BMP |
| VTP Binary Terrain Format (.bt) [5] | BT |
| Military Elevation Data (.dt0, .dt1, .dt2) [6] | DTED |
| ESRI .hdr Labelled [7] | EHdr |
| NASA ELAS [8] | ELAS |
| ENVI .hdr Labelled Raster [9] | ENVI |
| ERMapper (.ers) [10] | ERS |
| NOAA .gtx vertical datum shift | GTX |
| HF2/HFZ heightfield raster [11] | HF2 |
| Erdas Imagine (.img) [12] | HFA |
| Image Display and Analysis (WinDisp) [13] | IDA |
| ILWIS Raster Map (.mpr,.mpl) [14] | ILWIS |
| Intergraph Raster [15] | INGR |
| USGS Astrogeology Isis cube (Version 2) [16] | ISIS2 |
| KMLSUPEROVERLAY | KMLSUPEROVERLAY |
| In Memory Raster [17] | MEM |
| Vexcel MFF [18] | MFF |
| Vexcel MFF2 [19] | MFF2 (HKV) |
| NITF [20] | NITF |
| NTv2 Datum Grid Shift | NTv2 |
| PCI Geomatics Database File [21] | PCIDSK |
| Raster Matrix Format (*.rsw, .mtw) [22] | RMF |
| Idrisi Raster [23] | RST |
| SAGA GIS Binary format [24] | SAGA |
| SGI Image Format [25] | SGI |
| SRTM HGT Format [26] | SRTMHGT |
| USGS ASCII DEM / CDED (.dem) [27] | USGSDEM |
| GDAL Virtual (.vrt) [28] | VRT |
| ASCII Gridded XYZ [29] | XYZ |
Extensive capabilities of data exchange are essential for the daily GIS work. GRASS profits from an external project, the GDAL/OGR library (http://www.gdal.org). This FOSS library is also used even by global data vendors as well as in some proprietary GIS applications. Many of the raster and vector formats supported for reading can be also be generated.